


How The Light Gets In

by echoist



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Backstory, Church of the Breach, F/M, Headcanon, M/M, Minor Character Death, Post-Canon, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 19:15:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd told Hermann time and time again that he didn't love the kaiju, he studied them with a curiosity born from a life-long fascination with the giants of the earth. Newt had always been the dinosaur kid – still was, if he was being honest with himself, and the kaiju were the biggest, most awe inspiring terrors he'd ever seen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How The Light Gets In

**Author's Note:**

> I've scoured the wiki and all but memorized the novelization, but sometimes I still like to make up backstory for these two.

 

 

Newt wandered through the narrow, twisting alleys of the Bone Slums, shuffling his feet. The PPDC wasn't wasting any time clearing out the Shatterdome, having already brokered a deal to sell the facility to the Chinese government. He didn't need to be there for that, watching the techs and engineers that once built monolithic fighting machines now tearing down their stations for scraps. He'd already seen too many heavily laden carts wheeled out to waiting aircraft, packed full of tools and equipment. The primary staff still lingered, though they too had already begun the process of packing up their quarters into suitcases and duffels, waiting for the last grain of sand to drop.

It had only been a week since the world didn't end.

He'd watched Hermann slowly begin to dismantle his side of the lab, but even Newt could tell he was stalling. He didn't want to leave any more than the rest of them. The Jaeger program had been their home for ten long years, and no matter where they were stationed, it still fit like a glove. It was hard to let go of your center of gravity, even if the war was finally over.

Newt's progress took him in a long, winding spiral, ending up before the great Temple to the Breach. He'd seen the building a hundred times from a distance, and once up close from Chau's balcony, watching a procession of monks bless the faithful with their evening litany of prayers. Chau had been dismissive, even derisive of their beliefs, but Newt had always wondered what it might be like inside, beneath the great domed skull.

Reckoner, he mused, staring up at the polished bone, carved with intricate swirls and beautiful lines of calligraphic Cantonese characters. Entreaties, Newt supposed, to the great angels of the deep. Supplications for salvation, or, frighteningly, invocations to the beasts, begging them to release a spoiled and polluted world from its unstoppable course of self-destruction. He'd never been a believer in anything except evolution, the simple genius of DNA and the brilliant, ever adapting nature of the world around him.

Today of all days, something called out to him from deep within the Temple, and Newt couldn't fathom for the life of him what it could be. He'd told Hermann time and time again that he didn't _love_ the kaiju, he studied them with a curiosity born from a life-long fascination with the giants of the earth. He'd always been the dinosaur kid – still was, if he was being honest with himself, and the kaiju were the biggest, most awe inspiring terrors he'd ever seen. The fact that they came from another world only made them more interesting, made him dig through their internal organs and study the wonders of their bone structure to determine their evolutionary development. To find their strengths and weaknesses; to take them apart and see how they worked. He'd always been _that_ kid, too, much to each set of foster parents' continual annoyance.

A hooded and robed disciple stood at the base of the stairs, nodding once as Newt passed by on his way up to the entrance. There was something inside, he could feel it, just waiting for him. It was uncomfortable and enthralling all at the same time, and who could resist a pull like that? He tugged open the heavy wooden door, adorned with bas reliefs of kaiju on either side, their forearms rising to meet in the middle. Raythe and Karloff, if Newt wasn't mistaken, both Category II. Okhotsk and Vancouver.

The interior of the sanctuary was dim, lit only by banks of candles along the walls and the fading light of day filtering through stained glass windows as night approached the city. A figure stood before a great statue of Reckoner itself, raised on a dais within a circular alcove at the back of the main room. _Hermann_ , Newt realized, suddenly understanding why he was here. Their brief Drift had left lingering sparks of connection in both of their minds, causing what Newt could only classify as spontaneous neural growth. It left half-formed axons spitting out signals and currents to dendrites that weren't there – at least, not within their own cerebral cortices, resulting in all manner of perplexing neural activity.

Thoughts that felt somehow foreign, emotions that overwhelmed and contradicted, not to mention a semi-functional homing beacon on the other's location. Newt wondered why Hermann's presence hadn't pinged his radar sooner. He'd begged Hermann to undergo simultaneous MRI evaluations with him so he could see if his theory panned out, but had only received a flat _no_ in response, followed by 'Absolutely not.' His lab partner's lack of dedication to furthering the study of biochemistry was disheartening, to say the least.

Newt pushed away his first impulse to join Hermann where he stood, silent and still before the titanic effigy, instead making his way around the walls of the sanctum. Each towering glass panel depicted a kaiju he knew by heart, twilight seeping through blue and green fragments to cast ripples across the walls and ceilings. He experienced a vague moment of disorientation, feeling as though he were suddenly plunged underwater, before realizing that was the entire point. An acolyte in a simpler robe, deep blue with embroidered red at the base and cuffs approached Newt from the opposite direction, solemnly lighting candles within large glass canisters beneath each gilded panel.

The effect was impressive, he had to admit. By flickering candlelight, Newt could identify each kaiju depicted along the walls. Scissure, Kaiceph, Ceramander. Tentalus, Hidoi, Kojiyama. All recreated with loving detail, as if ready to spring forth from their mosaics and prowl about in the ever shifting shadows. Newt meandered around the room, unable to keep still, until he couldn't find a good reason to continue avoiding the altar - if that's what it even was. Hermann knew he was here, had known since Newt walked in, he was certain. Still, he remained unmoved before the monolithic statue, leaning slightly to one side, resting a good portion of his weight on his cane.

Newt measured his steps, walking slow and careful to stand beside him, looking up and up into the jaws of the beast. He felt a slight breeze, carrying with it an eerie, almost musical tone. Air whistling through the sinus cavities, he thought, admiring the structural engineering while the hairs on his arms stood on end. He didn't look over at Hermann, and Hermann didn't look back at him.

'Why here?' Newt asked quietly. After spending so much time cooped up together, each lab much like the next, he wasn't quite sure how to act without their precisely delineated borders.

'I needed to think,' came the reply after a few moments.

'You can't think in the lab?' Newt pressed. 'I mean, I figured you never actually _stopped_ thinking.'

'This is...different,' Hermann answered, giving no further elucidation as to his purpose within the Temple.

'Yeah, but still,' Newt countered. 'Why here, of all places? I never took you for the religious type, dude.'

'I'm not,' Hermann answered, watching the rows of deep blue votives arranged in a semicircle about the statue, as if their waxen contents might at any moment burst into flame.

'But you used to be,' Newton realized, a single spark of understanding making the leap between the dendrites he could almost feel reaching out to their answering structures in Hermann's brain. A flickering rush of images filtered up behind his eyes: a young Hermann receiving Mass beside a stern looking father, a small boy in a uniform hiding behind laboratory equipment during recess and lunch, out of reach of bullies and the caustic hostilities of his classmates. An open bible in German translation, heavily annotated in the margins with question after question. A young man, nervous and yet exultant, with a bright eyed, beaming woman at his side, presented with the Fields Medal. _Transire suum pectus mundoque potiri._

Hermann paused for a long moment, as if inhabiting the same memories, his eyes closed to the waves of blue and green washing over the sanctuary. 'Mathematics is the universal language,' he began, as if stood behind a podium. 'It speaks for all things, underlies all that we understand and accomplish, as well as all that we cannot yet fathom with our limited perception. I once believed that by predicting subatomic behavior, studying the fearful symmetry between bosons and fermions, harmonizing the strings that animate all that we are, all that we have been or ever will be would lead us closer to a perfect understanding.'

Hermann paused, drawing in a pensive breath. 'Dark matter shapes and animates the universe, still only seen and understood by the fields and forces upon which it acts. Is it possible to gaze into those mute spaces and not imagine the footprints of God? We exist in a state of confinement and yearn for asymptotic freedom. Quantum chromodynamics has shown us that what we view from above as order in fact arises from the chaotic motions of perfect systems we can neither see nor measure without constructing new wonders of the world to extend our reach.'

Hermann let slip a brief sigh. 'I once imagined that from these advances, and the relentless pursuit of further knowledge, we might one day be able to quantify and render knowable the true nature of the universe in all its mystery. To pull back the veil. That perhaps M-theory would allow us to finally understand _why_ instead of simply _how_.'

'You were using particle physics to look for God?' Newt asked in the echoing silence that followed Hermann's brief lecture, his tone as respectful as he could manage, given the circumstances. He could understand the search for things unseen, ever smaller systems and dynamics science knows must exist given their observable effects. But an omniscient, omnipresent creator that set the universe in motion and then took to peeping through people's windows in judgment had never seemed even a remote possibility to his admittedly overactive mind.

'Not as a means to an end, no,' Hermann replied, glancing down briefly at Newt before turning back to the statue. 'I have always been far more interested in the applied sciences than the abstract, but that doesn't mean I never looked to them for answers.'

'What changed?' Newt asked, knowing he shouldn't, feeling the prickle along the back of his neck that begged him to keep his mouth shut, just this once. Whatever Hermann's answer might be, it wasn't for him.

'I discovered that it no longer mattered to me whether God existed or not,' Hermann explained in an oddly flat tone. 'That certain events can neither be predicted, nor understood.'

Newt felt an old, festering sadness rise to the front of Hermann's mind, spilling over until it filled every molecule of his being. He nodded and took a step back, half-turning to leave, aware that he had already pushed too far. Paradoxically, Hermann continued speaking and like a opposing magnet, Newton turned back to listen.

'My wife and I were in San Francisco for a conference in August, 2013,' he said, speaking into the rising darkness as the last rays of the setting sun expired beyond the Temple walls. 'Vanessa was the most brilliant, innovative, and fascinating mind I'd ever met. I've never understood why she settled for someone like me.'

Newt wanted to turn and run from the words that were sure to follow, but his feet refused to move. 'Dude,' he deflected. 'You're the smartest guy I've ever met, I mean besides me, obviously.' He puffed his chest out a bit, attempting a stab at humor. 'In all seriousness, though, I sincerely doubt she was settling for anything.' _Not a chance_ , he thought, stealing a gaze in Hermann's direction.

From the faraway look ghosting his eyes, Newt couldn't be sure Hermann had even heard him. 'We took shelter when Trespasser struck, but the earthquakes caused the building to collapse around us.' He continued speaking as if once he'd started, he couldn't stop. 'A steel bar pinned my leg and held me to the ground, but Vanessa – I could see her, only a few feet away, beneath a large chunk of stone. I thought - ' He swallowed hard, shaking his head. 'Foolishly, I thought that if I could only reach her, I could surely lift it. Her spine was - crushed. She could barely move, but she still tried to reach out for me.'

Newt could see it, the image burning into his brain and he tried to shut it out, tried everything he could think of to divorce his mind from Hermann's most painful memory. He saw blood on polished black tile, seeping through a thick layer of crushed granite silt. He saw a woman's hand stretching, her fingers curling back into a fist and then spreading out as far as her muscles would allow. More blood in her thick, blonde hair, trickling down her face, staining the pile of rubble that buried her and held her down.

'I struggled for hours, rescue squads spread too thin across the city. I never even managed to touch her hand before she was gone.' Hermann's left hand twisted around the cane, his eyes dropping down to his leg. 'She was twenty-five years old and I watched her die, three feet away from me.'

Newt stood in awed silence, blinking rapidly. 'I didn't know,' he breathed out. Hermann would doubtless be horrified if Newt wrapped his arms around him in a pathetic gesture of sympathy. He couldn't help the impulse; subtlety just wasn't in his genes and right now he wanted to reach out, to offer comfort, to touch. He jammed his hands into his pockets instead. 'I never saw that in the Drift.'

'It wasn't for you to see,' Hermann spat out angrily, staring up once more in vicious contempt at the behemoth rising above their heads.

'I'm _sorry_ ,' Newt returned, flustered and shaken, the forceful blow of shared empathy stinging his eyes like smoke. 'About what happened, and – and for asking. You're right. It wasn't any of my business. I'm just – I'll just go.'

Hermann spoke softly as Newt turned away, gently pulling him back. Newt watched as he plucked a lengthy match from a glass jar and struck a flame to life, lighting one of the votives on the outer edge. 'A light in dark places,' Hermann murmured, 'when all other lights go out.' Newt could hear the words in a woman's voice, knew that Vanessa used to repeat them while speaking about something else entirely. She'd been speaking about _him_. It was one of Newt's favorite lines from Tolkien, too, but he didn't feel that particular anecdote would be well-received, under the circumstances.

Hermann turned slightly to the right, holding the still blazing match out to Newton with an inscrutable expression. One small, struggling flame against the apical vagaries of the world. Against salient chance, knowing neither of them believed in fate.

Newt took the match, and lit the candle beside Hermann's. 'For San Francisco,' he said, as quietly as he could manage. 'For Hong Kong City. For everyone we've lost,' he rambled, hesitant and unsure, his voice thick as the flame caught and held. 'For you,' he added, glancing up at Hermann.

Hermann tilted his head, a questioning expression on his face. 'You haven't lost me,' he said, and Newt felt a hint of curiosity behind his words.

'And I don't want to,' Newton replied steadily, taking a risk and reaching out to cover Hermann's hand, white knuckled where it gripped his cane. He watched the tiny wavering lights until spots filled his vision and he had to look away. An overwhelming urge swept through him to pick up the candles and set the room ablaze, to tear down the statue of Reckoner, gazing confidently, triumphantly across the sanctuary. No, fascination certainly wasn't love.

Hermann covered Newt's hand with his left, and shook his head slightly. Newton could tell Hermann had felt his rage, had watched the entire Temple burn down in their minds. 'This is still a sacred place,' he explained, attempting to hide a wince at his own words. 'Perhaps not to us, but certainly to others. We may feel their loyalties are misguided, but that is not for us to decide.'

Newt fidgeted, but managed to remain in place, focusing hard on a mental image of the effigy going up in flames. He opened his eyes and thought he saw the hint of a smile turn up one corner of Hermann's mouth. 'All this time,' Newt said, his words coming out hot and agitated. 'Ten years, you've been working with me, letting me show off my stupid tattoos, listening to me talk about them like – like – and you were _there_ , man. You should have told me to fuck right off. Jesus. I'm such a dick.' He dropped the withered match and ran a hand nervously through his already mussed hair. Newt wasn't sure he'd ever felt so guilty about anything in his life, and there were weeks, entire months he viciously wished he could take back.

'You were looking for something as well,' Hermann allowed almost kindly, 'and though I may have often insinuated to the contrary, you were doing good work.' He glanced away at the admission. 'Even in our lines of study – perhaps _particularly_ so, we don't always find what we set out to seek.' He kept his voice low, out of respect for the sanctum, or because the words seemed a bit stuck in his throat. 'Occasionally, however,' he managed to continue, 'we do find something that allows us to persist in the search.'

Newt felt a strange, tingling rush as he saw himself through Hermann's eyes, showing up disheveled from a sleepless night of theorizing, fingers stained with ink, blasting classic rock while he all but submerged himself in kaiju innards, racing from one project to the next and multitasking until Hermann thought he must be mad from it, or at least profoundly dizzy. Riling him up until in the midst of their shouting and name-calling, Hermann would find the answer to a problem he'd been hovering around for days. The strange attractor to his fixed point, reminding him to sleep, to eat, and some days, even to breathe. It had been a long twelve years since San Francisco.

Newt stood rooted to the ground, floored by the abrupt turnaround. He'd never had the slightest inkling that he was anything but a thorn in his lab partner's side, let alone an important element in his routine. A chaotic, if necessary part of their fluid system dynamic, instead of just one more in a long line of antagonists.

'Besides,' Hermann added, knowing from the look on Newton's face that he finally understood, at least enough for now. 'I see nothing wrong with memorializing the defeat of our greatest enemies.'

'I – what?' Newt asked hazily, still trying to sort out whose brain he currently occupied.

'I don't actually hate your tattoos,' Hermann confessed, leaning in with a conspiratorial whisper.

'Oh,' Newton replied, still a bit rattled. 'Oh.' He repeated the syllable, his head spinning for a moment before he found a few words that might merit making it out past his tongue. 'You should try it sometime, you know? Just a little one, maybe, not like the entire neural interface code for the Jaegers down your back or anything.' He couldn't stop himself from visualizing what that might look like, and a flush crept up into his cheeks. 'They, ah, they can be really addictive, once you start,' Newt fumbled.

Herman's gaze flickered over the vibrant sleeves visible below Newt's rolled up cuffs, and back up to the patch of red and golden yellow that showed beneath the open buttons at his collar. Newton thought to himself that he had never wanted to show off the entirety of his art to anyone quite so much as he did right now. He bit down harshly on the inappropriate sentiment, fiercely hoping it hadn't bled through. The small smirk that crossed Hermann's lips told him it had. _Fuck._

'I should get back,' Newt mumbled. 'Finish packing up the lab. Figure out where it's all going to go once they kick us out.' He tried to squash the ache in his chest at the thought of everyone going their separate ways, wondering who would put up with him now that the world wasn't in immediate danger and even the PPDC had to take what it could get. So far he'd come up with two ideas: jack, and shit.

'Would you like me to requisition a bulldozer?' Hermann asked, his tight-lipped smile tempering the hostility that could have accompanied the quip.

'Ha, very funny,' Newt answered. 'It wouldn't even get here for a month,' he added with a shrug.

'Then why don't I help you sort through all that rubbish?' Hermann offered, and Newt glanced up at him, surprised. He hadn't really noticed that Hermann's hand still covered his on the cane until it slid away, leaving a slight chill in its wake.

'Hey man,' Newt replied, palms out. 'It's your life. You want to spend it shredding my doodles and repacking kaiju organs, that's your business.' He still gave Hermann a hopeful smile while gesturing toward the entrance.

'It might be easier to build a robot for the task,' Hermann mused as they made their way out of the Temple, an acolyte near the door waving a censor full of noxious incense in their faces as they reached the stairs. Newt coughed and waved it away with his hand.

'If you're gonna do it, get in while the scavenging's good,' Newt threw back, a little sadly. Hermann braced one hand on his right shoulder while they descended the tiled staircase, and Newt instinctively matched Hermann's pace.

'With your credentials, I could probably get you a position at TUM,' Hermann offered after several silent minutes, anticipating Newton's thoughts as they dodged bicycle traffic and vendors hawking their wares in the streets.

'Munich Tech?' Newt replied, surprised. 'Dude, that would be amazing,' he blurted out, clearly enthused by the idea. 'You sure I wouldn't drive you batshit, though?'

'It's a large campus, Newton,' Hermann answered drily. 'There's only so much insanity even you could be capable of spreading over the distance.'

'So,' Newt pushed, elbowing Hermann lightly on the arm. 'What you're saying is, you don't mind if I drive you a little crazy?'

'That,' Hermann replied firmly. 'Wouldn't be anything new.'

Newton's face split into a grin as they walked the rest of the way back to the Shatterdome, a spark of warmth coiled in his chest. This time, ok, _this time_ , he really hoped Hermann was paying attention and would feel it, too. From the content expression on his fellow scientist's face, Newt was pretty sure he did.

'We're so getting you a tattoo when we get to Munich,' Newt vowed. Herman huffed out a small amused breath, but didn't say no. 

**Author's Note:**

> 'There is a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in.' - Leonard Cohen


End file.
